


Peter is too young

by AnotherAoife



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: chilldhood sexual abuse, not the darkest but also not the lightest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 16:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherAoife/pseuds/AnotherAoife
Summary: Peter is nine. He cries when he's left alone with the babysitter.(a look at how csa effects peter)NO GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONSthis is 100% victim-focused





	Peter is too young

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: childhood sexual abuse
> 
> there are zero graphic descriptions because fuck that.  
> also fuck abusers.

Peter is eight. They repaint the guest room a light blue and stick up dinosaurs and Iron Man stickers. May convinces Ben to buy Peter a racecar bed. It’s a Lamborghini made of cheap plastic and Peter loves it.

 

Peter Parker is nine. He cries when Ben and May leave him alone with the babysitter on their date night. He cries when they come back. He cries in school and on the bus and during dinner and there’s never a moment he’s not crying.

 

He stops eating. He can’t sleep. He has bruises on his skin that he can’t remember getting. He has bruises in the shapes of fingers gripping around his skinny hip bones. He doesn’t speak for days and he won’t tell anyone why.

 

When the babysitter comes back, he stops crying. His eyes are wide and his breath is short and he locks his bedroom door when the doorbell rings. Peter is terrified.

 

Peter is ten. The dentist says he’s damaging his teeth from brushing them too much. He tells the nice dentist the reason he has to brush them, _has to._ The dentist tells Ben. Peter thinks it’s allowed, Skip only said he wasn’t allowed tell May or Ben. He didn’t say anything about Peter telling a nice dentist and then that dentist telling Ben. Peter thinks this must be safe.

 

All Peter wants is to be safe, and to be clean.

 

Ben breaks Skip Westcott’s nose. Peter doesn’t have any more babysitters. The police ask him to point out on a doll where his babysitter’s hands were.

 

Peter is eleven and May says he’ll never see Skip again. He moves schools and meets a kid called Ned. Not everything is always bad.

 

They repaint the storage room and put Peter's racecar bed inside. Peter moves in there. There are no dinosaurs or Iron Man stickers or science posters, but Peter thinks that’s a good thing. He can’t walk inside the other room.

 

Peter is twelve. Eugene- no Flash. He wants to be called Flash now. They’re the only two people in the locker room and Flash puts his arm on Peter and pushes. Flash pushes him into a wall. It’s not that hard, kind of playful even. It doesn’t hurt.

 

Peter has a panic attack. Eugene helps him breathe through it. He doesn’t ask any questions and Peter loves him for it. Neither of them tells anyone. Not a lot changes, but Flash doesn’t push Peter again. Flash doesn’t let anyone lay a hand on him.

 

Peter thinks in another world, they could've been friends. 

 

Peter thinks he must understand, because of the bruises Peter can see sometimes on his ribs.

 

Peter is thirteen. He thinks he understands what happened to him. He figures he should be over it by now, but sometimes he still can’t open his mouth to eat. And sometimes he can’t sleep in his own bed, so he moves a pillow from the couch onto his floor and sleeps there instead.

 

They move to a different apartment, one where Peter can walk inside every room. Then they buy Peter a new bed.

 

Ned’s mother tries to hug him when he goes to her house for the first time. Ned has to call May to talk to Peter on the phone. She’s the only one who can convince him to unlock Ned’s bathroom door.

 

“Please don’t touch me.” That’s all the explanation Mrs. Leeds gets. It’s enough for her. She asks if he wants lasagna for dinner.

 

Peter likes going to Ned’s house.

 

Peter is fourteen. A spider bites him and he feels his body changing. It terrifies him, whenever his body does something he doesn’t understand. He is _terrified._

 

He wants to tell Ben, but something deep and black and animal inside him says that’s not allowed. And then Ben is shot. He dies on the footpath, surrounded by dirt.

 

Peter wants to die but he knows he can’t do that to May. Peter wants to go blind, he wants to never see anything again, wants to forget how to remember.

 

He wants to pull his brains out through his nose and his ears and his eyes and never see a street corner or a gun again. He never wants to feel scared again, never wants to feel again.

 

His new school offers him grief counselling. He doesn’t think the counsellor would be able to handle anything in his head.

 

Peter is fifteen. He is alone in a locked room with an adult he doesn’t trust for the first time in six years. He forgets how to breathe, how to think. Tony Stark touches Peter’s arm and Peter breaks his finger before he can remember anything the police taught him when he was ten.

 

Mr. Stark is kind to him. Peter knows he knows, it’s all written in his file, but he tells him anyway. He doesn’t tell him the way he told the police, he tells him the way he tells himself.

 

_In the mouth. It was quiet and terrifying and it hurt a lot. I’m better now though._

 

Mr. Stark makes sure Skip is never getting out. Peter is not better, but he's getting there. 

 

Peter is sixteen. He can’t forget how to think anymore, now it never turns off. He can’t remember how to sleep. MJ is one of the kindest people he knows. He keeps busy.

 

One of his teachers call him Einstein as a joke and he cannot think. _EinsteinEinsteinEinstein._

 

_Hey there Einstein, we’re friends right?_

 

He sits outside, leaning against the wall and they send Flash after him. They don’t talk. Flash offers him a joint. He shakes his head.

 

“If I ever started I don’t think I’d be able to stop.”

 

Flash puts the joint away and nods.

 

“Me too. I don’t even smoke.” And suddenly they’re laughing.

 

The next day, Spiderman goes to Flash’s house and wraps his dad up in web fluid while his fist is raised above Flash’s ribs.

 

Flash’s dad goes to prison. Flash is kinder.

 

Peter is seventeen. MJ kisses him and then he doesn’t have a shirt on and she just keeps kissing him and suddenly he’s on the floor with his head in his hands and he’s crying and he cannot breathe and MJ is scared and _You have to stop I can’t breathe._

 

Peter is seventeen and he watches Mr. Stark die and it’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair. He wants it to end but it never ends it just keeps going and going and going why does it never end.

 

Peter feels it, in every cell in his body he feels it. It hurts. It’s dark and deep and twisted and it lives between his ribs and in the back of his throat and every day it’s getting bigger and it _hurts._

 

Peter is seventeen and he finally goes to the school counsellor.

 

“You can’t tell anyone what I say here, right?”

 

The counsellor nods and Peter lets everything out. It doesn’t make him feel better but she makes him promise to come back.

 

Peter doesn’t know what he did to deserve all this, but he’d give _anything_ to undo it.

 

The counsellor doesn’t make him feel better, but the more he goes the more he feels the thing living between his ribs get smaller.

 

Peter is eighteen. He sees a Lamborghini parked on his street and he forgets how to walk. He sits on the same New York streets where his uncle died and he sobs. Savage and beastly, he sits on the street and cries. It’s the thing, black and untamable that was living in him. It’s coming now, leaving through his eyes and his lungs and his throat. Every breath he takes is feral.

 

He heaves and lets his body be wracked by the sobs. It keeps coming. MJ and Ned sit beside him, whispering soothing nonsense. He keeps crying until it’s all gone, it’s out of him.

 

He keeps going to the counsellor because he doesn’t want the thing to come back.

 

Peter is nineteen and Morgan is seven and Peter swears that nothing will ever make her throat hurt or her teeth need scrubbing twenty times a day.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Childline: 1800 66 66 66  
> Samaritans: 116123  
> You can talk to me on Tumblr: aoifeanamadan.tumblr.com


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